Description

This area comprises the high ribs visible from Sky High Road (and my house), lying above and right of the Eyebrow Overhang. The leftmost rib is a long slab, broken at half-height by a horizontal fault which forms an overhang on its right side. The right rib is the steepest. Below it lies an outcrop with a large overhang. Many of Crane's so-called "alpine" routes top out on or near this area. These routes entail fair amounts of steep hiking interspersed with nuggets of technical rock. Many can be done (with slight modifications) as winter adventure routes, and in most cases, difficult pitches can be circumvented. Mike's Mountaineering Route begins on the "Under the Measles Wall" slab, ascending any of the routes there, walking over to Hydrophobia then shifting right to Halitosis, climbing a short slab called Garthnik before crossing the Belleview Path to continue upward via a slab and corner system. Above these, a rightward traverse through the woods for a hundred meters or so precedes tricky climbing up the left side of a longer slab. At its top, a leftward walk gains another long, low-angle slab that tops out at the base of the Sky High route, where it finishes. Only the Lonely begins on the longer slab mentioned above, about 30m right of MMR's line. Climb knobs up the slab and over a short headwall "cap", walk right to a black, low-angle slab and ascend the left edge of the black rock, through a steep section with cracks, then follow open rock to the base of Sky High. McNeill-Harrison starts at the extreme left end of the Eyebrow Overhang, climbing a short vertical crack to a leftward traverse along a horizontal crack to gain a right-rising ramp. Breaking along another horizontal crack leftward, it then heads up slab crossed by brush lines to the woods, where it trends right and up patches of rock to finish on the left edge of the rightmost rock rib. This is the hardest of the current alpine routes, with a 5.9 starting pitch and a 5.7 R finishing pitch. The Alpine was an attempt at a winter mountaineering route. It takes the ice slab of the Eyebrow Overhang, works up the woods to the black slab (which in winter is thinly iced) mentioned in Only the Lonely, which it climbs up right of center, moving rightward to a break in the thickets above. It then ascends a tree-choked gully to the final overhangs, where it breaks right of the leftmost rock rib, reaching a perched boulder and the slab above to finish. Expect thin, easy ice on the lower half, and easy dry-tooling/rock climbing on the upper. Lane-Harrison was a desperate attempt at climbing *something* the day after torrential rains. After scrambling to the top of the Blueberry Ledges, we sloshed our way through the short slab above, headed into the gully with the spruce tree in it, then meandered upward, avoiding most of the rock along the way because it was terrifyingly slick. We moved right of the Sky High ribs, ending on a level patch of rock above them to the right. One could continue the adventure by bushwhacking to the summit from the top of this area.

Getting There

Take the East Path past the Measles Walls and past the second of two giant boulders beside the trail, then bushwhack up, seeking a walkable gully to get above the Eyebrow Overhang, bringing you to the base of the left and middle ribs. To reach the righthand rib requires mild fifth class climbing or some unpleasant thrashing through tight spruce.